Sunday, March 13, 2005

In a bout of collective lunacy, more and more Russians are taking a revisionist view of Stalin as a "wise leader" who built Russia into a powerful nation, and now deserves statues and theme restaurants. Some even think his particular brand of leadership is exactly what Russia needs.

Here's my favorite quote from the article:

"Look, everyone makes mistakes," Mr Vassilyev said. "Stalin wasn't a saint, but he was a great man who built up a strong state.

Killing over 20 million people seems like a pretty big fucking mistake to me. I'm pretty sure that kind of mistake takes you out of candidacy for Great Man status.

As with the Holocaust "revisionists" who deny the existence of Auschwitz gas chambers, or any systematic killing on the part of Hitler or the Nazis, recent books have forwarded the notion that only 2.5 million died under Stalin's rule, and that he wasn't really responsible for those anyhow. This sort of thought needs to be vigorously countered in the same manner that Neo-Nazism has been.